Working with Save the Sound, a bi-state program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, I partnered with NiJeL to design and develop the Sound Health Explorer, a tool to increase understanding of water quality conditions in Long Island Sound and to activate local and regional solutions to improve those conditions. This first iteration of the Sound Health Explorer focuses on the health of Long Island Sound’s coastal beaches and the bacterial pollution that leads to beach closures and water quality degradation. The tool paired the bacterial data with other datasets that further characterize our waterfronts and may assist in identifying contributors to local pollution problems. Rainfall is also featured on the site, allowing you to see which locations suffer from bacterial contamination as a result of wet weather overflows and runoff, and which locations suffer bacterial contamination in dry weather as well.
Roles: User Experience and User Interface Design, Wireframe Development
Working with NiJeL, I assisted with UX design for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s DUSP Explorer. This interactive set of 4 data visualizations mapped research collaborations among the faculty at the Department of Urban Studies + Planning. As NiJeL’s Information Designer, I helped the student and faculty led team at DUSP research additional design options to compliment the initial rounds of design and development work done by Ben Golder, a DUSP Masters Student at the time. In addition, I led efforts to design on-boarding instructions, textual details, and the Projects-based hive plot visualization, allowing users to explore connections by research project, faculty, and topic.
As part of a Fellowship with the Civic Data Design Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I assisted NiJeL with the update of the NSF funded City Digits project, combining administrative and business data with qualitative student-led research in an interactive learning tool. This collaborative project among the Civic Data Design Lab, the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and CUNY’s Brooklyn College develops, pilots, and tests innovative resources and tools that support high school students’ learning of mathematics.
The Cash City tool is a visualization of the spatial patterns of AFIs, or alternative financial institutions (i.e. pawn shops, cash checking, wire transfers), in New York City. It is a site for discussion about how AFIs affect local communities. Cash City is the second module of the City Digits project, an effort to develop place-based curricular modules that investigate and analyze specific themes related to the local, urban context to support high school students’ learning of mathematics. The curricular modules are enhanced by the integration of geo-spatial technologies, which enable students to explore their local urban landscape, collect field data, and organize and visualize patterns.
While not the primary UX designer, I assisted with the major design questions that arose while the site was in development. I also assisted with user research and testing both with teachers and students.
As a consultant for Data Driven Detroit (D3), I worked as the UI/UX designer for the conCensus project funded through the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund. This online data portal seeks to stitch together top-down administrative data with bottom-up community gathered data, allowing grassroots organizations to share their data and connect with a larger city narrative. Additionally it would serve as a hub to identify data gaps, needs, and dreams, inspiring collaborative data-driven decision making at multiple levels. Human centered design is a fundamental piece of these Knight funded prototype projects; our project team did significant user research with community data activists at Focus:Hope and Warren-Conner Development Coalition.
The purpose of this regional scorecard is to provide a comprehensive look at the status of the Detroit region through key indicators that align with the five priority areas of One D: Economic Prosperity, Educational Preparedness, Quality of Life, Social Equity and Regional Transit. While at Data Driven Detroit, I served as the Project Manager on the OneD Project, overseeing its second and third iteration. I also developed the UX and created wireframes to lead internal discussions.
My Role: Project Manager, Data Design & Development, User Experience, Front-End work, & Wireframing.
During my 3.5 years at Data Driven Detroit (D3), I assisted as both a Project Manger and as the Communications Manager. As the Communications Manager, my major role was to ensure that our publications and designed materials were of high quality and extended the D3 brand. While D3 culture promotes staff autonomy and freedom to develop their own products, I regularly provided feedback on design decisions. These included our website and interactive tools, data visualizations, charts & graphs, and design & copy of white papers and reports. I also served as the editor of both the newsletter and the blog.
Included here are some of the projects on which I provided feedback and support during my time as the communications manager:
As project leader and interface designer for a $10,000 Grant Opportunities [Collaborative Spaces] (GROCS) grant, our team of five researchers designed an online application to assist health workers in health education material creation. This website “global studio: health network” is intended for health workers in low-resource environments; it provides educational scaffolding for the development of locale-specific public health materials for and by health workers who may not have a background in material creation or design. It also would allow health workers to network with each other as they create a library of online resources. As part of the process we explored ways in which mobile phones can be incorporated into the site to further democratize the power of information technology.
My Role: Writing Grant, Building Team, Team Leader, Concept Development, Research, Design & Layout
Included are the wireframes I developed.
